International and European policy on work and retirement: Reinventing critical perspectives on active ageing and mature subjectivity

Abstract

In this article, the authors critically examine themes that have become associated with work and retirement in the context of demographic change. Two discourses are looked at in detail, those of 'active' and 'productive' ageing, with a focus upon International and European social policy. Drawing on the work of Foucault and others, the emergence of a dominant discourse and its effects on policy-based understandings of ageing are examined. A new orthodoxy of ageing subjectivity is identified, restricting the social contribution of older adults to work and work-like activities. A subtext refers to the co-option of liberal gerontological priorities into new and socially rigid forms of identity that legitimize particular ways of growing old. The authors conclude that a radical re-positioning, inspired by mature identity, is required to rely less upon economically determined roles and more upon alternative grounding in existential life tasks and experience to give space for a 'mature subjectivity' and a desirable 'mature subject'.

Situating occupation in social relations of power: Occupational possibilities, ageism and the retirement 'choice'

“…Within this context, as within several other countries belonging to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation in Development (OECD), there has been a massive re-configuration of discourses and policies pertaining to work and retirement since the 1990s partly in response to rising concerns regarding the economic and social implications of population ageing. For example, while retirement and public pensions had come to be viewed as a social right in the postWorld War Two period and early exit from work had been encouraged in the 1970s and 1980s as a means to deal with unemployment and optimise productivity in Canada, the United States and many European nations, there has been a dismantling of both the 'right' to retire and public pension systems as well as a growing focus on ageing citizens working longer and assuming greater responsibility for retirement savings and pensions 36 . More specifically, within the Canadian context, re-configured discourses of 'positive' and 'productive' ageing have been increasingly fore fronted in policy and public texts as a means to promote individual responsibility for proactively managing the health, social and financial 'risks' of ageing 37,38 .…”

Activation and Active Ageing? Mature-Age Jobseekers' Experience of Employment Services

“…The institutional logic of activation thus amounts to misrecognition of the unemployed in that it constitutes welfare recipients as a deviant social group who must be moved from welfare-to-work in order to become full members of society 'capable of participating on a par with the rest' (Fraser, 2000: 115). A related neo-liberal political rationality can be seen in the turn towards 'active ageing' in policy discourses on population ageing, which similarly maligns those not in work (Moulaert and Biggs, 2013).…”

Struggles of Older Workers at the Labour Market

“…The most relevant theoretical instrument when it comes to analysing and evaluating the topic of ageing population is the concept of the so called active, successful or positive ageing (Tyrovolas et al, 2015;Kelly and Lazarus, 2015;Latorre et al, 2015;Ji et al, 2015;Moulaert and Biggs, 2013). This concept focuses on determining the conditions and factors that impact the vitality of older generations as one of the main parts of the process of active ageing (Carra et al, 2016).…”